CASU logo Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Group members

Mike Irwin
Floor van Leeuwen
Bob Argyle
Sue Cowell
Francesca De Angeli
Dafydd Wyn Evans
Eduardo Gonzalez-Solares
Simon Hodgkin
Jim Lewis
Marco Riello
Guy Rixon
Nic Walton

The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is part of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University and is mainly involved in survey astronomy.

Expertise within the group covers a broad range of ground-based and space-based projects ranging from data processing and image analysis techniques through to data curation and access to UK facility data archives. Modern era wide-field digital surveys produce vast amounts of data and CASU is at the forefront of automatically processing and archiving these legacy products.

Research interests of individual CASU members include: statistical analysis techniques for data mining; searches for rare objects in large area surveys; properties of nearby galaxies and star clusters; attitude control and exploitation of astrometric space missions.

CASU Activities
CASU Astronomical
Data Centre
Archives of astronomical data
CASU data
processing
The CASU data processing facility
VDFS Operation and development of the VISTA and WFCAM dataflow pipelines
Future Space Missions: GAIA and Planck Projected future space missions for mapping the Nearby Universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background
INT Wide Field Survey A deep wide-angle multipassband CCD survey on the Isaac Newton Telescope
Hipparcos The Hipparcos data archive and mission overview
Carlsberg
Meridian
Telescope
A fully automated astrometric sky survey telescope with a drift scan CCD
APM Facility (RIP) Description of the APM microdensitometer and online sky catalogues
PDS Facility (RIP) A commercial microdensitometer with high dynamic range and projection optics


Mike Irwin - mike@ast.cam.ac.uk